El Corazon golf resort plan on course, city says

OCEANSIDE -- City officials say the 465-acre El Corazon de
Oceanside, a former sand mine in the heart of the city, is on
course to become a world-class golf resort that would help make
Oceanside a major tourist destination.

The golf resort, along with a companion beach hotel, could be
open within three or four years, according to Deputy City Manager
Mike Blessing. The developments will provide an important boost for
the city's image and bank account, say Blessing and other city
officials.

"The resorts will enable us to have additional revenue and to
provide additional services for our residents," Mayor Terry Johnson
said last week.

But even with the golf resort apparently within driving
distance, there is at least one potential hazard along the course.
A small group called Save El Corazon is trying to start an
initiative drive to preserve the land for city parks, a use for
which it once seemed headed.

San Diego's Manchester Resorts, developer for both projects,
submitted a draft master plan for the golf resort with a 200-room
hotel to the city in late May. A draft environmental impact report
on the 400-room beach hotel complex was completed June 15.

Oceanside officials project the beach resort will generate $130
million in tax revenue over 30 years. No financial projections have
been done for the El Corazon portion of the project, but Johnson
estimates that it will bring the city a minimum of $1 million a
year.

The city has pledged $15 million in financial support to
Manchester in return.

Manchester's El Corazon plan calls for at least one 18-hole golf
course, plus an 80-foot-high, 200-room hotel. One-hundred twenty
acres of environmentally sensitive land would remain a wildlife
preserve. The city would retain 20 acres for parkland.

Some oppose golf resort

Meanwhile, a group led by former City Council candidate Lou
Fenton is trying to block the El Corazon project. Members want a
large portion of the parcel preserved for parkland. That was the
vision formed in a series of public meetings several years ago. It
was adopted by the City Council in 1997.

The group hopes to submit an initiative format to the city
clerk's office for approval this week, Fenton said. If proponents
can get 10,482 valid signatures in support of the initiative within
six months, a special election would be scheduled.

Fenton and several supporters announced the initiative effort
June 6. Fenton said he has been encouraged by a number of community
activists but has received only a few calls from people wanting to
sign on.

"We have a single purpose, to save El Corazon as public
parkland," Fenton said. He would like to see such things as a
senior center, large swimming pool, playing fields and hiking
trails on the property.

Said community activist Dixie Bales, another initiative
supporter, "We have always felt that the property should belong to
the citizens of Oceanside."

Bales was among perhaps several hundred people who attended
city-sponsored vision meetings in 1995 and 1996. Some of them
expressed hopes of El Corazon becoming Oceanside's version of
Balboa Park.